Investigating oral communication strategy use qualitatively: risks of obtaining inaccurate data

• Main Authors: Al Saqqaf, Asmaa, Bidin, Siti Jamilah, Shabdin, Ahmad Affendi, Din, Wardatul Akmam, Swanto, Suyansah
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Society for Science and Education, United Kingdom 2016
• Subjects: P Philology. Linguistics
• Online Access: http://repo.uum.edu.my/22363/1/ASSRJ%203%2012%202016%2076%2080.pdf; http://repo.uum.edu.my/22363/; http://doi.org/10.14738/assrj.312.2339
• Institution: Universiti Utara Malaysia

Oral communication strategy (OCS) literature reveals that the vast majority of relevant researcher has adopted qualitative approaches to identify the OCSs used by second language (L2)/ foreign language (FL) learners.The problem in investigating the OCSs through solely qualitative techniques lies in the fact that participants, when performing limited qualitative tasks, cannot employ all the OCSs they actually utilize in reality or have in their own OCS repertoire. Additionally, it is argued that participants could be aware of those OCSs if asked consciously by answering a questionnaire.Thus, it could be hypothesized that numerous OCSs failed to be detected in the past research because of the ‘absence’ of another technique that could have elicited all the OCSs that must have been existent in the participants’repertoire.Therefore, this paper sheds light on this problematic issue that many OCS researchers may not be aware of, urging them to think before deciding to adopt only qualitative instruments in an OCS use investigation.It also attempts to suggest some recommendations that may hopefully help address this dilemma.